


Love, the Undersigned

by Nenalata



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bad Flirting, Blind Date, Blushy Ingrid, Budding Love, Chance Meetings, Don't do this to your blind dates, F/F, no matter how terrible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23010886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nenalata/pseuds/Nenalata
Summary: Ingrid had been on enough blind dates to know when her father has set her up on a bad one. And out of all the bad blind dates she'd had, this one was really, especially, extremely bad."Welcome! I’m Dorothea, and I’ll be taking care of you today."Well, maybe Ingrid can help 'take care of' this bad blind date, too.
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault/Ingrid Brandl Galatea
Comments: 14
Kudos: 140





	Love, the Undersigned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mott](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mott/gifts).



> Yet another commission request for the inimitable Mott! She pointed out there really need to be more cute n promising n sweet Dorogrid fics out there, and honestly, she always has these killer-creative prompts to make such things happen. I wanted to do such a crucial task justice, and I hope I did! Thank you so much!

“Ingrid?”

Ingrid inhaled a gulp of air for courage, plastered a smile on her face, squashed down hope, and turned around.

“Oh, hey. Alan, right?”

The guy waving at her from a table for two actually wasn’t that bad-looking. He even got to his feet when she approached. But he kissed her hand instead of gripping it when she went in for a handshake, and any positive emotion Ingrid might have felt for him withered and died.

“Ailen, actually. Like the volcano. Almost as hot, too.” Ailen winked—winked! who other than Sylvain _winked_ while flirting poorly?—before sweeping the free chair back from the table. “After you, my lady.”

 _Oh, brother_.

‘Oh, Father’ might have been more apt, given he was the one to set her up on this date in the first place. But Ingrid was hardly more forgiving as she sat and pulled herself closer to the table. Ailen pushed her chair in more anyway. Too tightly, and far too close to his chair.

“I think it’s called Ailell,” Ingrid ventured to correct him. Ailen laughed loud enough to make the patrons closest to their table crane their necks to gape. Ingrid shrank into her seat and Ailen patted her hand like she’d made a very funny, very flirtatious joke.

“Your dad did say you were smart. Guess I should’ve known he wasn’t exaggerating!”

“Well, my father _didn’t s_ ay you were this charming,” Ingrid snapped without thinking, but Ailen preened. Sarcasm didn’t seem to be one of the many languages her father’s email had listed. Shouldn’t a movie talent recruiter have better people skills?

Maybe women dressed up for a blind date didn’t count as _people_ , she thought savagely and probably unfairly.

But the waitress who had suddenly, miraculously materialized by their table like Ingrid’s personal knight-in-scarlet-armor…

 _She_ was definitely _people_. And way more charming than Ailen even with the first words out of her tastefully-lipglossed lips:

“Welcome! I’m Dorothea, and I’ll be taking care of you today. Can I get you two anything to drink?”

Ingrid jerked her hand away from Ailen, red-faced and mumbling like she’d been caught cheating. She’d never heard more beautiful sentences in her life. And it wasn’t just their waitress’s—Dorothea’s voice, lilting with just a hint of customer-service scorn. It was because those sentences made Ailen pull away to peruse the wine list, loudly ordering one of the most expensive bottles—bottles!—on the menu.

“I don’t really drink,” Ingrid informed him after Dorothea smiled as big and glittering only as someone hoping for a good tip could do.

Ailen patted her hand _again_. If he did that one more time, Ingrid was going to bite it off and call it dinner. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head,” he assured her. “This one’s on me. I know of your…” Ailen cleared his throat and lowered his booming voice to a stage whisper, “ _financial situation_.”

In a way, it was a relief to hear Ingrid wouldn’t be expected to go Dutch on crazy-expensive wine she wasn’t even going to drink plus the surf and turf she now was free to order when Dorothea floated back. But it also meant she was stuck nodding along with whatever he said for the rest of dinner on the off-chance he’d get offended and decide to leave her footing the bill.

Ingrid was going to have words with her father when she got home. She was sick of these stupid things. She wasn’t a bartering chip, dire as their financial straits were. And while she understood how important it was for her, her father, and her brothers’ joint television studio to appear profitable from the outside, at least until that merger deal with Blaiddyd Broadcasting went through…

Maybe her brothers could stand a few bad dates, too.

“Hey!” Ingrid jumped when that patting hand strayed too far. She shoved it off her upper thigh, and Ailen raised both hands in apology.

“Sorry, honey. Guess I got too familiar.”

“You certainly did,” Ingrid said through pinched lips. She sawed away at her steak, serrated knife gripped meaningfully. “And,” she remembered to add, shoveling the last chunk of meat in her mouth, “I’m not your _honey_.”

“Yeah,” Ailen sighed. “I see that.” It seemed like that was going to be the end of that, but then a shit-eating grin spread over his face again. “I wonder what it’d take to get you nice and sweet?”

“More wine?” a much-sweeter voice asked just to the side before Ingrid could cough that paid-for steak back in Ailen’s ugly mug. How had she ever thought him even passably attractive?

“Bit busy right now,” Ailen said with a wave of his hand Dorothea’s direction. Ingrid looked up at her with pleading eyes. But what was Dorothea even supposed to do? Their waitress held _another_ bottle of wine. She was here to make money, just as Ingrid in a way was. She wouldn’t do jack if it meant a good tip.

Ingrid couldn’t help it. Her eyes prickled with tears.

Dorothea’s lipglossed lips _grinned_. Before Ingrid could decide if she was hurt, their waitress winked. Turned the bottle around. Let her read the label.

“No worries,” Dorothea said _to her_ , sliding the bill from her scarlet apron and placing it in front of Ailen. “Take your time—”

Ailen thrust his debit card at her without glancing at the bill and waggled his brows at Ingrid like such a blatant display of wasted wealth was supposed to impress her. “Buy yourself something pretty,” he said, shoving it at her over and over while Dorothea juggled both wine and bill and card.

The wine, Ingrid realized, wasn’t what they’d ordered. It was from a cheap vineyard.

“Right, thanks, sir, one moment—”

The wine bottle was also conspicuously open.

“Please, take _your_ time.” Ailen’s sardonic voice proved he did indeed possess an understanding of sarcasm. He made a great show of turning away from Dorothea’s balancing act. Like she was beneath him, and not in the way he wanted Ingrid to be—

“Hold on, please,” Dorothea’s sugary-sweet acting voice insisted.

“Watch out!” Ingrid’s own traitorous voice tried to warn Ailen, but it was too late.

Wine spilled everywhere. On the table, on the plate, snuffing the candle with its low alcohol content instead of fueling the fire. On Ailen’s clothes.

Everywhere but Ingrid.

“Oh, _shit_!” Ailen leapt out of his seat, knocking the chair back into another seated patron.

“What the hell, man?”

“Sorry, sorry! I’ll be right back!” Dorothea scurried away to go get towels or napkins. Presumably. Only Ingrid saw how she’d squirreled away Ailen’s debit card and the bill.

“Shit!” Ailen squealed in outrage. Ingrid, it seemed, had been forgotten. She took the opportunity to stifle a smile against her fist at the varying octaves through which Ailen’s curses bounced.

“My deepest apologies, sir.” Dorothea re-emerged from the kitchens, a far-too-small napkin daintily held aloft in her tapered fingers. She handed both it and the bill, complete with a returned debit card, back to the furious, humiliated customer.

Ailen stared at both items. Ingrid stared at Dorothea.

Dorothea winked. It looked better on her than it had Ailen or Sylvain.

“Whatever,” Ailen mumbled, back to his regular deep timbre. “You can be assured we’re never coming back, though!” He scribbled his signature with a flourish, making a great show of writing _0.00_ in the ‘tip’ line.

“We’re really not,” Ingrid agreed. Before Ailen could preen too much, she added, “Ailen. I think after such a childish, rude display, you and I aren’t going to work out. In the long-term _or_ short term. Get home safely. Or don’t; you’re still presumably a grown man who can make his own choices, hm?”

She stayed, stubborn to the end, in her chair, waiting out Ailen’s flabbergasted silence.

Oh, but how _good_ it felt to speak her mind again. Ingrid was no doormat. Why turn into one because her ignorant father had good but utterly-misplaced intentions?

Ailen finally grumbled embarrassed excuses and left. The restaurant bell jingled merrily even as the door slammed shut. After a brief stunned silence, chatter returned to the dining floor.

Dorothea, however, had not returned to the kitchens. No, she crossed her arms over her chest and stayed put, like Ailen had personally offended her, too—well before his ‘ _0.00_ ’ tip. She inspected her nails and said unapologetically, “Sorry for the accident, miss.”

“Ingrid,” Ingrid supplied automatically. “I, uh, that’s my name. Ingrid.”

“Ingrid…” Where the wine-soaked blind date had almost seemed to stroke the greasy syllables of her name on his tongue, Dorothea floated the sound through the air like it was perfume. The syrupy quality of Dorothea’s voice that had been missing from her obsequious waitress-voice set Ingrid’s face awash with crimson, like some of that wine had splashed onto her cheeks after all. “What a lovely name.”

Ingrid didn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t like she’d chosen it for herself. “Ah, yours as well.”

“Aw, thanks. But yours…” Dorothea shook her head, and some delicately floral, shampoolike scent wafted Ingrid’s way. “I’m sorry it wasn’t properly _appreciated_. If I’m overstepping, I…”

“No. No, thank you for stepping in when you did.”

Dorothea’s eyes gleamed. “I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”

There didn’t seem to be much to say past that. Ingrid was saved from inventing something by the chime of the restaurant door. “Well, take care!” Dorothea plastered that customer service smile back on and whisked away in a cloud of floral perfume to seat a party of six.

Ingrid stared after her flouncing, scarlet uniform far past the point of ‘polite’ and bordering ‘creepy.’ But the beaming Dorothea settled the new customers as if she didn’t notice, right until she caught Ingrid’s eye and gave her one friendly, dramatic wink. Ingrid flushed and fussed with her bag, as if she were planning to leave a—

 _Leave a tip_.

Ingrid cast a furtive look over her shoulder and picked up Ailen’s signed receipt. She winced at the indeed-exorbitant price, then again at that damning “ _0.00_ ” in its ‘gratuity’ slot.

But the pen remained.

As did Ailen’s signature.

Well.

Ailen could burn in that volcano he so resembled, couldn’t he? It wasn’t like he would ever notice, anyway; he’d made his disregard for his own wealth clear enough, like he’d been showing it off.

Ingrid added an extra zero. Then another. Then another, because why not? Ailen had even boasted of his salary. He could afford it for a bad blind date each night of the week. She finished the whole thing with a flourishing integer, set the pen down with trembling fingers, and bolted from the restaurant like armed guards were on her heels.

She didn’t even look behind her to see Dorothea’s face turn white, then red, then scarlet as her uniform when she saw the ridiculous and petty tip Ingrid had left on Ailen’s receipt.

* * *

Ingrid skipped out of the meeting room the moment the ink was dry on the merger agreement, and the Blaiddyd Broadcasting rep followed. “You really saved us,” she said to Dimitri, who had buckled up his briefcase as soon as her father’s signature joined hers and her brothers. Dimitri shook his head, an embarrassed smile gracing his lips. “If it hadn’t been for the news of Blaiddyd and Galatea-Daphnel’s merge, I don’t think you’d have a single new contract to finalize today. We were worried we couldn’t renew our current actors’ contracts, let alone take more.”

“We only did what anyone else would have done for old friends,” he said modestly. Before Ingrid could call him out for such blatant, kind lies, he did admit, “But having last season’s bookkeeping records on hand did make convincing the client’s agent easier. Thank you for going out of your way to collect them.”

“It was my younger brother, actually.” Ingrid gave her brother a cheery wave as they passed by his office into the lobby. “Guess he finally decided to…pull his…weight…”

There was a familiar woman in the lobby’s cushiest chair.

Hands folded neatly in her lap in that graceful posture adopted only by nervous people waiting too long. While not a uniform, her dress was indeed still scarlet, eye-catching, showstopping, head-turning. And, as if Ingrid’s still-buffering comprehension needed even better bandwidth to aid it, the aroma of flowery-sweet perfume wafted her and Dimitri’s way.

“Excuse me,” she mumbled to whatever Dimitri’s reply was. She hurried past the receptionist, smoothing her business skirt as she went. The click-clack of her flats boomed through the too-small space; Ingrid found herself blinking at startled green eyes before she had caught her breath.

“Hi,” Ingrid said when Dorothea said nothing at all. The greeting seemed to pull her out of her stupor.

“Hello again, Ingrid,” Dorothea smiled brightly, a little too close to the waitress-smile Ingrid remembered from last week, and the bubbly nerves in her chest deflated. “You must have been who my agent was talking about, then. How funny that it’s you!”

“Your…” Ingrid craned her neck, but no one in a suit and dark shades fizzled into being behind Dorothea’s chair. Dimitri, however, cleared his throat. “Oh! Oh, your agent. Oh,” she said for the umpteenth time, comprehension finally dawning, “right, you’ve a meeting, forgive my—” She turned around to excuse herself, but Dimitri was already waving her off.

“The fault is my own,” Dimitri apologized to Dorothea. “Ingrid, I should have informed you sooner, but the negotiations with your father went longer than I…Well.” He directed his embarrassed smile at Ingrid, then continued. “I’m Dimitri Blaiddyd standing in for Mr. Galatea today. You must be Dorothea Arnault, then?”

Ingrid cursed herself for not cutting her father’s ramblings off sooner.

“The one and only. I came early, though. Don’t you worry your pretty head.” This last comment seemed to be directed at the steadily-reddening, mortified Ingrid.

“Indeed you did,” an oblivious Dimitri said. He checked his watch. “If you don’t mind waiting a bit longer, Ms. Arnault, I’d like to get your contract in order. If you’d like to go find lunch and come—”

“There are plenty of nice places around,” Ingrid blurted out without thinking. “I know all of the best places, too. Every single one.” Hating the sound of her own voice, she rushed to elaborate, “That is, if you’d—”

Dorothea beamed. “That sounds delightful.” There was still something plastic about the friendliness, but as Ingrid shepherded her out of the studio and onto the streets, it softened.

When asked about cuisine, Dorothea shrugged. “I trust you,” she said. “I’m not picky.”

“Me neither,” Ingrid said, relieved. The bistro next door sounded good enough. She held the door open for Dorothea and offered her a sheepish grin. “I’ll eat anything.”

“Hm,” Dorothea replied, fixing her with a critical eye. “So surf and turf’s on par with gas station burgers, is it?”

“What?” Ingrid frowned, then scoffed once her slower-than-normal brain caught up. “Oh, goodness. Honestly, no offense to your fine establishment,” she said, “but I’d take a lifetime supply of gas station burgers over eating one more bite of _anything_ with that guy.”

“ _Ailen Luin_.” Dorothea drew out the syllables like they were song lyrics. Her bell-like voice gave them a luxurious quality they didn’t deserve.

“I can’t believe you remembered his name. I hardly do. Oh, the veggie stir fry is good, by the way. Even for a carnivore like me.”

“Mhm, does look good.” She’d hardly scanned the menu. “But yes. I think I’d remember the name of a customer who left such a _generous_ tip even after…let’s call it ‘a dramatic form of giving feedback on my service.’”

“A tantrum,” Ingrid corrected her, trying to ignore the way Dorothea’s smile had grown warmer. More genuine. “You can call it what it is.”

“Oh, not at all,” Dorothea said breezily. “Using a bad date’s credit card to give a struggling artist a bigger tip than she gets for a week’s worth of commercial shoots combined? I’d say you have a flair for the dramatic yourself, _Ingrid Galatea_. Lunch is on me, by the by,” she said to Ingrid’s slack-jawed expression. She swept past her in a cloud of sweet flowers, placed their orders for two veggie stir fries—one with steak add-on—and swiped her card before Ingrid could cry any further objections.

“You…didn’t have to do that,” Ingrid mumbled. Dorothea only winked.

“You’re right. I didn’t. But I did, so let’s go get seated and get to know each other properly. I’d rather know who my charming benefactor is before we really start to work together.”

Ingrid numbly lowered herself into the chair Dorothea pulled out for her. She didn’t object to being nudged closer to the table, at a respectable but friendly distance from Dorothea’s own chair. “Work together?” she asked once the hostess left them alone with glasses of water.

Dorothea pinched her brows together. “Yes, since my contract—you are Ingrid _Galatea_ , right? Or did I misunderstand our Mr. Blaiddyd? Are you two currently…?” she trailed off meaningfully, and Ingrid nearly tripped over her words to correct her.

“No, no no, no, not at all! He’s a—business partner,” she assured her. “In a way, he’s the _opposite_ of Ailen. I shouldn’t have to go on bad gold-digging dates ever again, thanks to our merge with Blaiddyd. No more gross guys, no more gross kisses, no more gross pretending.”

Should she have said that to someone who apparently had a “contract” with their studio?

But Dorothea gave her the realest smile Ingrid had seen yet, so she found she didn’t care. “So you’ve been on a lot of those, have you?”

Ingrid chewed on the inside of her lip, debating if this was a question she really wanted to answer. “Yes,” she finally admitted. “Honestly, you’re signing on at a good time. I don’t think your agent would have wanted to finalize this contract even a week ago.”

Dorothea gave her a wry grin. She scooted closer. “Well, _I_ would have,” she disagreed, “if only to save you from scum like that. I’ve had my fair share of bad dates and kisses, too.”

Ingrid was saved from formulating a reply by the arrival of their food. “Well, if I hadn’t gone on that one with Mr. Moneybags,” she tried to joke, waving a piece of steak around on her fork for emphasis, “we wouldn’t have gone on this lunch date together, would we?”

“I don’t know,” Dorothea laughed like music, and Ingrid was sure even if Blaiddyd hadn’t just lent Galatea-Daphnel its strength, that laugh alone could draw in countless awestruck viewers. “We haven’t had a gross kiss yet, and this date is going well enough. I might have considered anyway.” She laughed again, probably at Ingrid’s dumbfounded expression. “Sorry. Too much teasing?”

“Maybe a little,” Ingrid stuttered. She set her fork down. It was getting late. They’d probably just have to take the stir fry to-go, after all that. “At this point, I don’t think I could tell a gross kiss from a nice one anyway. Although,” she said, unable to meet Dorothea’s eye, “this is definitely a nice date. You’re right about that.”

“Good! Next time will be on me, too. You’ve got a lot of bad dates to make up for, and some lovely young thing just left me the most wonderful tip at my old job. And,” Dorothea’s lipglossed-lips curled into a heart-pounding, enticing smirk, “maybe I can help make up for those kisses with a nice one. Maybe even two.”

Ingrid found herself momentarily unable to speak, too dazzled by Dorothea’s smile. Too dazzled to convey the dire reality of her loudly-ticking wristwatch. She waved down the host instead, making boxlike gestures accompanied by pointing to their plates, hoping it made sense.

“Oh, my, you’re right,” Dorothea said, her hand flying to those perfectly-lipglossed lips in surprise. The host hurried back with the to-go boxes, and the two women wasted no time scooping their uneaten lunches into them and heading for the exit. “Do you think our dear Mr. Blaiddyd will forgive us if we bring him snacks as offerings?”

Ingrid laughed and held the door open again. “An apology will do, if he’s even upset at all. Dimitri’s got no sense of taste whatsoever.”

“Clearly not,” Dorothea said, twirling around as she passed to give Ingrid a curiously cheeky smile, “since _he_ wasn’t the one who asked you on a lunch date.”

“Now it’s definitely too much!” Ingrid snickered into her hand to mask her blush.

“Fine, fine.” They headed into the building once more. “Teasing aside, let’s do this again sometime, Ingrid. I won’t even pour wine on you,” Dorothea promised.

“And I won’t horrifically abuse your credit card.”

“What more could a girl want?”

 _Maybe a kiss_ , Ingrid didn’t say. Maybe someday she would. But for now…

“Sounds like the perfect date.”


End file.
